The current or the prevailing e-commerce is operated in a given pattern and processes enabling buyers to search for a supplier through a known search engine, select a known or an unknown website that appears to be a presentation corresponding to the intended shopping, be it for services or merchandise.
Once a potential buyer identifies a web of an e-shop and did find the items of interest, he has to go into next process of identifying himself, his address and his credit card, before he can materialize a purchase.
This process is a frustrating process that does not fit a repeat daily or weekly shopping for immediate deliveries of for example grocery products.
For people needing an immediate deliveries the common process described above cannot offer a solution if one needs in a morning a milk for breakfast, such ordering will take too long to be processed and delivered, even if the e-shop is a convenient store located nearby the residence of the e-buyer and does provide for local deliveries.
To help improve the process such nearby shops that provide deliveries may store the details of repeated neighborhood buyers and the buyers will introduce the shop's URL icon onto their PC's desk top, for an immediate recall of the shop's website. In turn the shop will provide the buyer with an access password, identifying the buyer and his credit card as recorded in the shop server. Such setup makes the ordering process faster and simpler.
Similar recording and storing of customer's data are offered by large shops, supermarkets, and department stores for improving the process of e-shopping to a repeat buyers. Such handling improves upon the e-shopping processes but that does not provide the basics needed to transform the grocery shopping and deliveries for example, into an efficient process.
The e-shopping first hurdle is that in all the above described e-shopping processes and setups the buyer has to surf the shop website by selecting products or services through pages displayed onto his PC, smart phone or iPad screen, fed from the shop server via the Internet or other IP networks, for selecting his choices through the shop's server.
Each such shop server has its own architecture, colors, styles, operating systems, programming and processing method that the e-buyers have to learn and follow. Thus even though the e-buyer detailed data is stored in the e-shop server, the proprietary programming and the different shopping processes for each individual e-shop extends the time spent to shop via a given e-shop server.
Further when the whole shopping cannot be supplied by a single shop and must be divided into two or more separate e-shops or e-service providers, such e-shopping calls for a very attentive and time consuming e-shopping process. Thus a combined shopping for groceries, such as extending the milk example given above, to shop for milk and cereals from two separate e-shops is a complex operation. Ordering two items from two different convenient stores in the morning for a breakfast will take too long time to order and deliver, while the buyer wants and expects the delivery promptly.
Other methods and apparatuses for e-shopping for services and merchandise merged into a closed circuit shopping systems operating in a registered closed circuit are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,603,842, 6,940,957, 7,461,012, 8,117,076 and in many corresponding patents issued and pending in other countries. Method and structure for simplified e-shopping coding is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 13/599,275.
The disclosed closed circuit e-shopping is provided via shopping terminals such as a video interphone monitor of a video interphone system and via shopping circuits of a cable TV system, an antenna TV system and a dedicated e-shopping terminal system. The referenced application Ser. No. 13/599,275 covers the coding for the e-shopping signals processed by the shopping circuits referred to above.
The basic or the fundamental difference between the two e-commerce methods, i.e., the prevailing e-shopping and the closed circuit e-shopping system, disclosed in the above referenced US patents is:
i. the prevailing e-shoppings are processed and completed through the shop's server, on line.
ii. The closed circuit e-shoppings are processed and completed through the shopping terminal on its own, off line.
This is made possible by the installing a pre-designed and pre-configured shopping programs and content, selected from a group of registered e-shops, and by loading and storing such programs and content into the memory of the e-shopping circuits of the e-shopping terminal. The stored content covers pre-configured or pre-selected products, as selected by a dweller, for a recall from a memory of one of the dedicated shopping terminals or from the memory of one of the TVs referred to above or from the memory of the video interphone monitors.
Thereby, the close circuit shopping is fundamentally different from the prevailing shopping by providing an instant recall of stored data, patterned through a template into a standard shopping select display. This enables an instant habitual shopping, through a habitually recognized pattern for selection of products and services.
The display of categories, groups and shops are all patterned via identical templates that are individually assembled and installed into the shopping circuit memory of each individual residence, on the basis of shops, categories and groups selected by each dweller. The dweller decides and selects the categories or group of product and/or services and from which shops he will buy from. The selected shops, categories and groups will be loaded and stored into the memory of the individual shopping terminal. All others are excluded but can be installed into the memory at later date, if the dweller changes his mind.
The closed circuit shopping apparatuses of the present invention are selected from a group comprising video interphone monitors, dedicated shopping terminals, TV, cable TV and/or TV and cable TV accessories such as set top box, shopping box, adaptor box, cable TV box, antenna box, converter box and/or a server that serves the whole building or the whole neighborhood via a local network and/or via the internal communication lines, TV cable lines or TV antenna lines.
The shopping terminals of the closed circuit shopping include the hardware and programs, pre-installed with a pre-defined shopping programs and content, for enabling to select and order through the stored programs as selected by the dweller, with no time waste by surf and search via search engines and via variety of shop servers. Such pre-programmed close circuit shopping provides the infrastructure to initiate prompt deliveries as programmed.
The prompt deliveries are provided via delivery station or delivery terminals, disclosed in the reference application Ser. No. 13/599,275, to be inside the building or within the neighborhood.
The searches for e-services and e-merchandise are carried through the displays generated by the installed program pages, using the displays of a video interphone monitor, a dedicated shopping terminal, a TV or a cable TV to process the shopping.
The introduction of a complete shopping program and content into the shopping terminals transforms the shopping terminals into a self-assembled privately owned e-shopping mall inside each residence, office or business, or it can be a virtual neighborhood shopping mall of a whole building and/or the whole neighborhood, if so desired by the neighborhood.
Such closed circuit e-shopping for products and/or services mandates that all the shopping terminals of the system must be updated at all times with each and every product and service particulars.
The pages of the current prevailing shopping servers, the selecting icons, the offered items, their prices, the conditions and any other particulars of the shopping process and terms, including the availabilities of services or products are commonly designed and programmed by website design professionals, knowledgeable in the structuring of website pages.
Supermarkets, for example, offering fresh produce, such as green vegetable or dairy products will change daily or weekly their pages to accommodate varying prices and availability because of seasons, locations and transportation consideration etc. The changes are ongoing continuous to the given pages of the shop server or to a group of servers used by larger supermarkets or chains of shops.
Such professionally amended pages, prepared internally by a given shop or a chain, do not fit the need to add, amend or replace e-shopping pages of a vast spread shopping terminals in large number of residences or businesses in different locations and places.
It will be prohibitively costly to design specific pages for a given consumer or to a group of consumers, be it one or more residence buildings or other group of potential shoppers. It will take long to configure and design and will be very complex to download and/or update pages to all the residence's individual shopping terminals. It will be an enormous task to download and/or upgrade vast individual programs and pages tailored to the many individuals or group preferences, be it regularly or randomly.
The referenced U.S. application Ser. No. 13/599,275 teaches a simple to design, add, amend or replace pages or a portion of page, such as a price of a single product included in a page, or the removal of a product from a page when it is sold out. The updating process must be provided in an easy to learn, configure, operate and install concept and at a low cost.
Another existing problem for a closed circuit e-shopping by a large number of tenants of a large residential or office building is the security of the transaction and the prevention of cyber theft, particularly from within the environment of the closed circuit itself.
Yet, another problem is the reliability of the shopping network in a building that is based on routers and switches cascaded throughout the building floors, via an IP local LAN network such as Ethernet. Routers of large systems installed in communication or electrical cabinets of staircases and entrance halls of large buildings, or mounted in a communication boxes on poles and similar are accessible to cyber theft.
Further a failure of one such router or a switch, may cut a whole section of a building from the LAN or from a building server and cut many shopping terminals from the shopping process, or from the updating process through the day or night.
To overcome security and reliability potential risks it is preferable to network such large complexes in a star topology, directly to a central distributor or a matrix of the system, that is securely installed in a protected surrounding.
The problems with such star connections are the cabling and their limitation in distance and speed. Fiber optic cables can be one solution, but fiber optical cabling, connectors and terminals are expensive and require expertise. Twist pair via such cables known as CAT5 provide low cost solution and are well handled and installed by electricians, but are limited in length and speed.
A solution to use a twist pair or pairs to connect the shopping terminals in a star to a central distributor or matrix or a specific designed router or switch is needed. One such solution is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,923,363 and in the above other referenced U.S. patents and the U.S. application Ser. No. 13/599,275.
The important issue is of course the speed, that must be fast enough to update the many shopping terminals at random and periodically, propagated to distances such as up to 200 m (660 ft) or more. This is not achievable via a standard Ethernet IP wired network, using the commonly installed CAT5 cables.
There are many other instances in which high speed communications via a CAT5 and similar network cables need to be extended for propagating a combination of signals, such as analog audio and video including variety of digital signals, but the cable length limitations prevent the use of common wires, and mandates combination of cables, such as coax cables shielded wires and/or optical fiber cables, requiring different interfaces, adaptors and connectors, all of which are technically complex to configure and install, and moreover, are expensive and require highly skilled experts to install.
Solutions are needed to propagate two way information signals comprising audio, video, data, control, codes, alarm and emergency in star configuration to include data loading at high speed to upgrade and update e-shopping programs including particulars of products and services into distances above the limits of 100 m of the CAT5 cable or via a single twisted pair cable, or a single twisted pair of multi twisted pair cable such as the CAT5, including the feeding of DC power via the same single pair or separate single pair.